


saturnine glory

by honestdelirium



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Burn Out, Character Study, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Depression, Dissociation, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Fantasizing, Hallucinations, Heavy Angst, Isolation, M/M, Masturbation, Self-Harm, Slightly positive ending implied, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, nicotine, self-neglect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 17:12:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29174703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honestdelirium/pseuds/honestdelirium
Summary: Kazunari locks himself away and refuses to get saved.
Relationships: Ikaruga Misumi/Miyoshi Kazunari, onesided Miyoshi Kazunari/Yukishiro Azuma
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	saturnine glory

It’s been a long time coming, Kazunari realizes. 

He’s shoving clothes into his duffel bag with manic energy. Everything’s dull. All of his senses seem like they’re failing him as he packs in a hurry. The only clear thought in his head is a giddy and wrecked _RUN. RUN. RUN. RUN._

So he does. 

You’d be surprised what kind of apartment you can rent for cheap without signing a lease. 

If you’re willing to live somewhere substandard, at least. 

He moves faster than he can think, which is probably a good thing. He knows himself. He’ll know he’ll stop himself. If he waits even a second, he’ll be too scared to go through with the plan in his head, a plan that, he now knows, has actually been brewing in his subconscious way longer than he’d thought because its picture clear. 

_I’ll run._

* * *

His fingers hesitate right before deleting his Instablam. When he remembers this moment in the future, his stomach will curl and hurt and he’ll stop thinking about it immediately because it's too humiliating. He could cut off human relationships as though the precious few individuals who knew him and actually cared for him were nothing but split ends, yet the Instablam account made him freeze? He blocked every number on his phone, changed _phone numbers_ forty minutes ago at the phone store, deleted his e-mail even, but it was the _Instablam?_

“I’ll die,” he realizes out loud, to himself, alone, in his bedroom, where he is sitting on the floor in only boxers and a stained hoodie. 

Poetically, though. When he flicks through the carefully curated and beautiful and beloved rows and columns of his account, knowing it would all disappear if he went through with wiping his presence feels like chewing glass. His Blam account is the pride of his life, a portfolio in the making for years. He remembers the cumulative hours spent in sunny but scenic parks trying to get the perfect shot of performative casualness, the validation of each like and comment that would rush into his chest like molten gold and spur him on like heroin, the nearly erotic cowardice of tracking trends and presenting his prodigious skill in doing so. 

Kazunari goes to delete his account, stops, tries again, and then chooses to temporarily disable it. 

That night, he wakes up at 3 AM cold and panicked and unable to recall the nightmare he’d just had. So instead, he groggily reaches for his laptop on the bedside table, deletes his Instablam account properly, and then returns to the murk of half-sleep, half-consciousness that holds him while whispering in his ear that he is so, so weak. 

He can’t bring himself to leave the fog when the sun comes up. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he is aware of what he did during the night, and that small, small part of his self is panicking and throwing a hysterical tantrum and bawling like a broken-hearted middle schooler, and Kazunari doesn’t want to deal with it. 

So he won’t. 

Even if he’s awake, he’ll keep his crusty eyes sealed shut and ignore the sunlight that’s turning his eyelids orange and _force_ his brain to keep dreaming rather than confront his issues. He will sleep, and sleep, and sleep, and when he can’t sleep anymore, he’ll run. And there’s a shaky relief in knowing that, at the very least, even if Kazunari is alone and pathetic and ugly and revolting, at least he won’t have to face his problems.

* * *

They are so disgusting. 

Kazunari hates the way cigarettes taste more than he hates himself. 

He switches to e-cigarettes and almost laughs at how unoriginal he is. Another bleach dyed, giggly, dumb, vaping TikTok eboy for the demographics even if he did delete his TikTok account (although, and he stays bitter about this, none of his TikToks had gotten many views). He presses a button and breathes in deep, a white cloud slipping down his throat and into his lungs and sending nicotine straight to the brain. He exhales blueberry and watches as it catches the fluorescent lighting of his bedroom.

* * *

He needs to shower. 

His hair is greasy and knotted. It’s so dry. Deep condition, olive oil based hair mask. His body feels ashy and rough. Exfoliation spray, a hot bath, lotion. His fingernails are so overgrown that he now scratches his itches carefully lest he scrapes himself too hard and accidentally coaxes blood forth. Warm water soak, clippers, cuticle care, maybe a protective polish layer. He has all of his regiments memorized. If he sinks into the haze hard enough, he can see himself only a few weeks or months younger sitting at a desk that doesn't exist and blowing a raspberry, chiding him to stick his chin up and make himself presentable. 

“You’re so stupid and annoying,” he mutters to the afterimage and stays in bed another day.

* * *

Kazunari’s thighs are prickling with goosebumps in the bathroom as the water from the shower head sprays the opposite tiled wall and warms up. He’s so tired and vaguely pissed off and cold, cold, cold. Does he even have the energy to stand up for thirty-five minutes? Does his arms have the energy to run shampoo through his hair, scrape at his scalp, and then condition, rinse, repeat? The loofah will be scratchy and unsettling to hold. The shower feels hopeless and if he stands there any longer thinking about it, Kazunari thinks he’ll start crying. 

He turns the water off, unwashed, still disgusting, and crouches down bare naked to squirt shampoo into his palm. He goes to the sink, refusing to look at his reflection in the mirror, and washes his front bangs but nothing else. At least the hair that stuck to his face with grease won’t anymore. He wets a towel and dabs here and there on his body, then puts his pajamas back on and collapses onto his still-warm bed. 

At least an effort had been made.

* * *

There are six bottles of beer in the pack Kazunari had ordered. He knows this because he counted them several times. A sliver of excitement wells in his stomach as he holds one. How adult-y of him. Beer. He thinks about how his Dad would come home and ask for one while tugging his tie loose, about how jealous he’d been that first year when everyone in the theatre went out for drinks without him just because he was a year too young, about how Azuma and Sakyo could run a successful podcast just about beer if they tried to. He’s gotten drunk before at parties, but he’d never had a drink just because and by himself. 

He opens one using a spoon and the back of his thumb (a trick an upperclassman had taught him) because his apartment doesn’t have a bottle opener and he starts drinking. He has to sit up to drink otherwise he’ll spill all over his face and mattress and pillow, he knows it. So beer got him to stop lying down. That must count for something. The first bottle disappears and he picks up the second. 

It’s boring to just drink. He opens his phone and starts flicking through YouTube videos. Sip. Watch ten seconds. Flip to another video. Sip. Another. Chug, chug, chug, new bottle, new video. 

_I should take it slower_ , Kazunari thinks, because his cheeks are already flushing red and it’s getting warm. He flings his hoodie off and leaves the last three bottles for later. 

“Paaaaaarty,” he murmurs, because it's--it's funny, in a pathetic way.

* * *

Sometimes, he decays in whimsical daydreams of the wreckage his exit had left behind, the one he cannot and will never be able to see. He can’t tell if its jubilation or languish but all he knows is that he is festering and rotting and dissolving in it like maggot-dripping meat. Did they cry? Muku must have cried, he cries over everything. Maybe Sakuya too, although he’s the leader of Spring Troupe so Kazunari was never his responsibility. Is Misumi, right this moment, turning that protractor over and over in his hand like he always does when he’s worried? Are Tenma’s eyebrows drawn in that confused pout of his whenever he has to deal with an issue? Is Yuki furiously embroidering away, careless enough to prick his fingertips in dismay, because Kazunari couldn’t have been damned to stay? Is Kumon trying desperately to be the glue that forces them to stick through it all? He wonders if Tsuzuru had either joined them in their blended shades of gray melancholy, or whether he sticks out like a splash of red, furious at Kazunari for his actions. There are so many possibilities and what ifs to explore that Kazunari sinks into the warm sludge of hypotheticals for days. He bathes in it. Decays. 

He likes the idea of being missed and mourned like he’d died. He likes it so much it leaves him frayed and haggard. The company must be struggling with keeping morale up because he was woefully selfish and incapable. The idea of scornfully bitten lips and hands worn from wringing in worry offers a dancing spark within. Have they replaced him yet? The spark dies. He wonders with who. 

No, they wouldn’t have. Kazunari rolls over in bed and traces a line on the back of his hand with numb fingers. Not yet. It’s too soon, they’re too sentimental and close woven for the theatre to have filled the hole he left behind so quickly. Kazunari refuses to check the MANKAI home page because if he’s proven wrong and there’s an unfamiliar face in a newly taken group photo, or if they took the pictures of him down from their blogspot, he would probably die. Poetically, again, but the point remains. That’s not something he wants to take a chance on.

* * *

Am I fundamentally broken? 

No, seriously, Kazunari asks himself. 

He’s never slipped this far, this fast before. He curls up with his back to the door and ponders. 

Sometimes he throws on an oversized sweatshirt with moth holes in the elbows and drags himself to the nearby convenience store to stock up on meals for the next few days and that’s not a problem. The train trip to the smoke store to refill on vape juice takes longer (Kazunari is currently on a bottle of key lime pie that tastes of nothing like actual key lime pie but it’s not bad enough to throw away and waste) but that too can be done. 

His objective for that day in particular was too much. Walking to the park for some sun? It’s too much. It’s too pointless. There will be eyes on him. Eyes judging his disheveled appearance and whispering abuses behind raised palms. 

It’s out of a poorly written drama. The nausea, the paranoia, the way his knees knocked together and the way he collapsed heaving for air right before he left. But it happened in real life and now, he sits behind the door and tries to sift through his emotions. 

Some part of Kazunari knows he can get up and walk out of the door and shower and do all the normal things that normal, pretty people do but he _can’t_ right now. He crawls back to bed and opens another bottle of beer. Nicotine, alcohol, sleep, and junk food. He smiles to himself, tight and chin wrinkled. One Pinterest board traded for another but he’d always follow a blueprint.

* * *

Today, Kazunari is in a panic. 

Then he forgets what it was about, possibly because he forced himself, and goes to sleep.

* * *

Today, Kazunari remembers what it was exactly he was twisting his spine into knots over and continues to loop those knots but more coherently. 

Back in middle school, the shocking revelation. Class had ended for lunch while Kazunari had gone on a quick trip to the bathroom. At his return, the classroom was completely empty, the bodies that had warmed the seats just a few minutes prior having sprinted off to nooks and crannies where they could eat their meals in peace or to battle the swarm at the canteen for a sandwich. 

_No one waited for me?_ a younger, stupider, more innocent Kazunari had thought then he saw all those empty seats. Of course no one had waited for him, why would they have waited for him? He had no friends in that class, he’d had no friends in that entire school, only a fool would have bet more than three people in his year even knew his name. He remembers having sat back down at his designated seat for the rest of the lunch period. 

He panics because he imagines what his middle school self would say if he saw Kazunari right now. He writhes when he imagines the judgmental glower, the twisting disgust, the “This is all I become?” delivered in a quivering voice. Pathetic. He is so pathetic. Half his brain reacts on instinct, hammering in older, now useless rituals to regain control of himself like getting another piercing or setting up a new Pinterest board or preparing forty thousand useless dialogue scenarios for just in case. And then the other half of his brain starts to become drowsy and heavy and he welcomes it like a desperate dog so he can drown in it and not have to think.

* * *

Thinking is too hard today.

* * *

Thinking is too hard today as well. He spends it putting together a little tower of beer bottles on top of one another in a tower. Since when has he had so many of them empty and strewn around? It’s probably not important. He stacks a tower and doesn’t think. 

* * *

Today’s dream is more vivid than usual. The colors are brighter, more saturated. He walks down the coastline of somewhere grassy and with plenty of sun. Trees with dark green, waxy leaves shade him from the burning light. He smells the ocean. If he had to guess, he’d say it’s Italy. Somewhere on the southern half. Maybe an island. Kazunari doesn’t care because he has a cottage here. 

The interior is wooden and carved with a dedicated and loving hand. Kazunari spins around in the quiet, blissfully happy. 

He looks outside the window, sills painted silver, towards the sea on the horizon and the dream shifts, transitions. 

Now he’s sitting on a boat. His hair is plastered to his forehead and his skin burns underneath the relentless sun’s rays, only to be kissed with cold droplets from the ocean’s spray. He throws his head back and laughs. 

“What have you, Sky!” Kazunari bellows to the wide blue. “I’ll catch you sooner or later!” 

And then, it’s senseless, of course it is, it’s a dream, he bursts forward from the ocean like a siren. His pirate jacket flares and his face is masked behind the silhouette the sun dares create, so Kazunari can’t see him, but Kazunari can imagine it, the marigold, no, butterscotch eyes, the sharp canines. Kazunari's sea witch cradles his face in scaled, webbed hands. 

“ _Not if I catch you first_.” 

They kiss. It’s overwhelmingly romantic. The sun is setting. 

“ _Would you drown to be with me forever?_ ” 

Yes. 

Kazunari wakes up here and then rejects reality, to sink comfortably back into the sea foam until salt sores rise from his arms, to hold that siren close until he is for sure eaten bite by bite until nothing is left behind. Kazunari is, as before, blissfully happy. 

* * *

It’s physically impossible for him to be sleeping this much, Kazunari realizes gloomily. But the days are ticking by so quickly that he _must_ be sleeping through it all. All he does is lie in bed in the dark until his head hurts so badly he glues his eyes to a screen for a few hours and then returns to the enveloping black. No sun comes in his room. The outside world is separate from where he is. Nothing can reach him here, and he permits what parts of him leave. The control is so comforting. 

But that’s not the point of the original thought. 

He’s having trouble keeping his thoughts on track. As of late, instead of _thinking_ , his brain just dissolves into half-colored, half-lined images and smells and feelings and nostalgic emotions that are all connected but senseless. 

He can’t be sleeping this much. Kazunari doesn’t have a sleeping disorder and no one in his family is narcoleptic. So he wonders where all the hours have gone. 

That’s enough thinking for today. 

* * *

He spends two hours of an uncomfortable, lucid day teaching himself vape tricks. 

It comes up on TikTok after enough scrolls down a niche facet of the alternative subcategory and he’s fascinated in the thick white clouds that could be spun into fun shapes. He tries again and again until the top of his tongue is dry and cracked and filmy. Then he tries more until his throat hurts and the room has gone so foggy he’s forced to open a window in fear of the fire alarm maybe going off. Do fire alarms go off from vapor? Kazunari doesn’t know, Kazunari doesn’t want to find out the hard way. 

He only manages rings for today. He lightly taps on his cheek with his lips set in a tight O and watches the blurry, messy circles puff out and then expand, expand, expand until they swirl with the failures above his head. 

They’re pretty, he thinks with a fondness that’s not unfamiliar but certainly from a past life. 

* * *

Kazunari touches the front of his pajama shirt. It’s… slimy. 

“Ew,” he says out loud for the first time in a long while. 

He peels it off of him, some parts of the cloth sticking to his flesh in a gross way he doesn’t want to think about. He chucks it into the overflowing hamper and pulls on a white tank. He frowns at the hamper and gets up to shove all the contents into a mesh bag. And then he takes the mesh bag to the little laundry machine under the kitchen sink which he’ll never understand and gets the load going. 

The self-pride of managing a common, mediocre chore after a long period of just existing is intoxicating. So intoxicating, he gets dizzy and tired from the overexertion and retires to the bed to sleep. 

* * *

Kazunari reaches into the washing machine and pulls out a shirt, raising it to his nose. He gags and acrid bile coats the inside of his throat before he forces it back down. It smells awful. He should have set an alarm, he shouldn’t have gone to sleep, why in the world did he just leave the wet laundry in the machine? Of course they would reek otherwise. 

What does he do now? 

Does he put the clothes back in for another wash so they smell good? Does that work? Or does he just yank them out as fast as possible and get them drying by the window? He doesn’t know and the idea of reaching for his phone to search the answer, a clear confession of his ignorance and accident, is nausea inducing. So he chucks the shirt back into the machine and slams it shut and crawls back to the warmth of his mattress and his sour smelling duvet. Too many problems. Too much work. He wants to daydream and sleep and watch bad movies. If the load of laundry starts growing actual mold and his apartment gets quarantined for spores, so be it. 

* * *

Kazunari has a dream. 

A faceless, pointless, unimportant person kicks him in his chest. No pain, it is, after all, a dream, but he feels faint crumbling like his entire ribcage had shattered at the blow. He struggles to breathe and then vomits, white hibiscus petals tinged pink on the outsides. They flutter around him like shredded ribbons and he thinks they're the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. When Kazunari waked up, he can no longer see the flowers but he swears he still tastes blood in the back of his throat. It’s the reason why he spends thirty minutes lurched over the toilet, dry heaving with tears streaming down his cheeks. 

He presses the back of his hands against his eyes and drags them, but he can’t stop seeing the tip of a rounded black boot come hurtling towards his stomach. His eyes roll back in his head as he chases after the memory. 

* * *

Kazunari rocks himself. On his side and arms caging his knees to his middle, he plays the memory of the dream over and over again on the projection screen within his brain. It’s honey dribbled warm and tantalizing into the palm of his hand that he shoves towards his mouth and smears around, tongue slipping out to drink it down and chase after it again so quickly he asphyxiates. He doesn’t even realize he’s digging his elbow into his stomach, harder and harder to feel like abuse. 

The projection quivers and grows. Each time it replays beneath his eyelids, it changes, like a dissatisfied director is editing each clip with minute detail. His ribs stop crumbling and flying through the wind like ash, they’re now snapping and crunching. Bruises, first dark purple and then crimson, bloom all over his body and paint a picture on his flesh. 

Kazunari imagines himself broken piece by piece, lying in the dirt with mud smeared all over his bare body as rain comes down and the nearby trees grow roots to drag him down further. He thinks its the most beautiful, disturbing fantasy he’s ever had and something depraved stirs hot and slow in his gut. 

He wraps a cold hand around his hardening cock and jerks it roughly. His breath shudders high and then oozes out of him in a miserable keen. Broken, broken, torn to pieces, ripped apart—he drags the pad of his thumb across the weeping head and sobs. 

There’s something beautiful in the false memories he’s knitting together in this room that seems detached from reality, beautiful but twisted and lengthening the list of thoughts Kazunari will take to the grave. Every time he imagines the ice of his dream body’s destruction, the hotter the conscious one seemed to get. He imagines more, stopping scenes to add details that stir him further, the small ones that make his fantasy feel snug and tailored. He imagines the dark blue of a jean clad knee rushing towards his face to smash it in. He imagines his nose cracking and splitting and his eyes swelling too tightly to see. 

“ _Ngh…_ ” 

He comes quietly but his ears ring high like his brain has finally taken a break from being silent mush to focus and scream. White bursts hot and furious in his vision and then fades back to dark, but Kazunari swears he sees light spots from how vivid it had been. 

“Haaa,” Kazunari exhales before he drags his hand out of his boxers and wipes it on his shirt. “Ah… _Ahaha_ …” 

It is not a happy laugh but it slips out of him regardless. He chuckles again, softer, and then lets it dwindle down to a shuddering, silent whimper. He wants to cry. It’s cold and dark and filthy and lonely again. He curls up in the musty dank beneath his battered duvet, safe to finally break down but nothing comes. Only labored breathing and a single tear. 

His brain putters weakly and begs for rest. He grants it and slips into an unrestful doze. 

* * *

“I’m sick,” Kazunari whispers to himself in horror as he lurches out of a daydream. 

He’s sick, he knows he is. He can feel something in him rotting, like his body is dead, has been dead for a while now. It explains away his apathy and how he can’t really feel his heart beating anymore until he really tries to, and how his joints have been stiff. 

Rigor mortis. 

It made sense. 

But no, no, he’s not dead. Even if he can imagine his immune system giving up just like its owner had, even if he can imagine the last film of protection he had left tearing away and inviting billions upon billions of microscopic organisms to burrow deep inside his gut, breaking him down to tender chunks of meat, softer and more pleasing than when he had been alive, and claiming him as just meaningless matter that melts to nothing. Even with that, Kazunari knows he is not dead. 

But he is sick. 

He is very sick. 

He jerks himself off twice to it. To the idea of being sick. 

It’s exhilarating. 

* * *

He showers, finally. 

Not in any way he could be proud of though. 

He can’t tell if its the depression weighing him down or the fact that he’s lost a lot of weight. It’s not like he’s ever been a toned and oiled swimsuit model on a magazine cover in terms of build but Kazunari can’t recall a time before now when his ribs have stuck out so sharply. He runs his thumb across one and shivers at the tickle. They’re like razor blades. He doesn’t like it. 

He barely manages to dig into his skull, really rake his fingernails across his greasy scalp to claw away weeks of neglect, when he gets tired. His knees knock together and suddenly the water feels freezing. He turns it hotter and hotter and then collapses onto his ass. Whatever. As the water turns scalding, it’s actually quite nice. The room never gets quite as cozy as this. Hot thick rivulets like tears from a better, more organic past reincarnation stream down the sides of his face. His back feels like thousands of needles are digging into it. The skin must be lobster red, it must be. 

He remembers something tangentially related from art history class about a model for the 19th century’s Pre-Raphaelites. Elizabeth Siddall modeled for Millais’s heart wrenchingly and hauntingly beautiful _Ophelia_. They said that he got so lost in his art, he forgot of his model’s existence as a living human being and forced her to stay in her tub of water, modeling, even when it turned cold. She became severely ill with pneumonia and would never quite recover, until she died young. Hamlet Act IV, Ophelia singing as her body drifts down the river, then under, drowning her. 

Kazunari’s head is spinning and it takes him a moment to realize that he’s choking on a mouthful of shower water. He retches half-heartedly like not even his gag reflex is into being proper anymore, drags the back of his hand sloppily across his mouth, and crawls dripping on all fours out of the shower. He curls a dusty towel around himself and lies down with a cheek pressed against milder-lined, cool tile and rests. He can’t tell how much time passes until he gets up again but there’s a crick in his neck now. 

He turns the water off, wonders if he fucked himself over severely with the water bill (but dismisses because he hasn’t taken a shower in weeks, there was no way _one_ was going to surge the costs), and hobbles to the kitchen. Pruned and red fingers wrap around the frosty neck of a refrigerator beer bottle and he pulls it out. There’s no way he has the strength to open it with the spoon trick so he places a ridge of the cap against the dinky three-legged dining table he has not even once eaten at, and smacks the top with his palm. 

The cap’s jutted edge cuts a small dent into his palm which stings at first, then doesn’t, and the beer bubbles over onto the back of his hand and then the floor. He drops the towel around his shoulders onto the puddle at his feet. The kitchen light flickers as Kazunari chugs it back, standing bare in his “kitchen.” He finishes it off, tosses it into the trash bin, pulls on a pair of boxers, and then collapses onto his mattress. 

It is the best night he ever remembers having. 

He licks the palm of his hand and falls asleep to the taste of iron on his tongue. 

* * *

“Oh, I’m, like, _actually_ sick,” Kazunari breathes to himself as he scurries across the dark street. Only the streetlights offer any hope to see at all. 

Why was he doing this? 

He wouldn’t be able to tell you. 

Well, he just did. 

It’s because he’s sick, very sick, and he can’t get the idea of being beaten out of his head. It’s stuck with an adhesive stronger than anything physical. It’s stuck right in the middle of his brain and it makes his entire skull throb with agony. So here he skitters. 

Kazunari doesn’t actually want to get beaten up. 

…He thinks. 

So why is he running through the street? Why is his heart thrumming whenever he hears a scary sound behind him? It’s exhilaration. He walks outside, head buried in his hood, for a few more minutes and then sprints back to his apartment. He goes to sleep, dreamless and unperturbed, for the first time in what feels like forever. 

* * *

Kazunari flashes his ID with shame and ducks into the seedy bar. 

He’s a mess. But it’s 4 AM and if he stayed in that apartment any longer, he would go insane. 

He doesn’t talk to anyone today. 

* * *

Kazunari showers a week later and heads out. 

* * *

It’s now every Sunday. He sits, and feels his pulse quicken when people eye him sitting at the bar counter alone. No one approaches him, not yet, but it feels real. People were there. People who knew nothing about him, and would never know anything about him. Nothing _matters_ in a place like this bar. 

Thank god. 

He doesn’t think he’d be able to meet a standard if they had one. 

* * *

Kazunari runs his fingers along the stranger's stubble, lets it tickle him like sandpaper or a kitten’s lapping tongue, and the smell of sticky old beer on the run down bar’s countertop is clouding his head. He’s just about to lean in and kiss him, press the tip of tongue across a foreign roof, when someone touches the back of his jacket. Kazunari jerks when he feels it and turns around, a little scared but a little turned on at the idea that someone had interrupted him. Maybe someone who wants to join in on the fun? 

The fantasy fizzles out before it even truly begins when he’s staring into gold-flecked eyes he knows too well. 

“I thought it was you,” Azuma says quietly, before pulling his hand back. Like Kazunari had burned him. No, like Kazunari was so filthy, Azuma couldn’t even bare the thought of making contact again. 

He cocks his head to the side. He knows he looks sleazy and a mess. He only cares a little. “Azune. Nice night, isn’t it?" 

* * *

“Oh my,” Azuma says as Kazunari unlocks the door. 

“It’s home,” he replies sarcastically. “Take your shoes off if you want to. Or don’t.” 

He tosses his jacket to the floor and flops down onto the musty futon. Kazunari can’t even summon the energy to be embarrassed even though maybe a version of himself from months ago would’ve rather died than let himself be seen in such a state. It’s funny, Kazunari thinks, it’s almost like character development. Almost. 

Azuma swallows thickly as he kneels down across from him. “So… So this is where you’ve been all this time?” 

“Yeah.” 

“All alone?” 

Kazunari has to choke back a mean and spiteful laugh. “You don’t have to rub it in. Are we going to talk before?” 

Azuma’s brows furrow even more in confusion. “Before?” 

Oh, come on now. 

“Didn’t you come back with me to sleep with me?” 

It’s a flashing look. The horror, the shock, the repulsion, all blended into a _pathetic_ piteous frown before Azuma forces his face to go back to neutral. Carefully guarded as always. 

“Kazunari.” 

“C’mon, Azune, let’s have some fun before we never see each other again, right? Fate.” 

“ _Kazunari_.” 

He crawls forward on his hands and knees, grinning borderline mad. “I promise I’ll make it fun for you.” 

Kazunari leans forward for a kiss. 

Azuma grabs a fistful of his front locks, first merciless then gentle a moment later, shifting so quickly Kazunari almost thinks he imagined it. Azuma pushes him back by his forehead to look down at his eyes. Into his eyes. For a man who’s gaze is usually so soft and mysterious, it feels like Azuma is trying to see which angle would be best to plunge a knife through Kazunari’s skull. 

“Poor dear,” he says softly. “You’ve become utterly addicted, haven’t you.” 

“Ah.” Almost a question. Kazunari nearly flickers his gaze towards the pile of beer bottles in the corner, has a flashing thought of the vape in his jacket’s pocket. He isn't an alcoholic, yet, he knows he can go sober without a problem if he has to for others. And he can probably quit nicotine too with only minor withdrawal symptoms. Addicted? To neither of them. 

Azuma cocks his head to the side. “To misery.” 

“What does that mean?” Kazunari asks dumbly. He's too tired to try to figure out the solution for the riddles that drip from Azuma’s lips. Not today. Probably not for a long while. 

“You’re comfortable wallowing in what you’ve denied yourself for such a long time. But you’re so in love with the deluded sensation that you’re finally being honest, finally getting what you deserve,” Azuma uses the tip of his middle finger to tilt Kazunari’s head to the side, surveying each surface his hollowed face offered, “that you don’t want to stop. You’re drowning in an ocean of ecstasy and self-hatred you created with your own will.” 

What bullshit. 

“You can just say you don’t want to fuck me,” he snarls angrily. He slaps Azuma’s hand away and shrugs his jacket back on. “You can get the hell out now.” 

“Kazunari, I want to help you.” 

“The door is there.” 

Azuma leans forward on his palms and knees, eyebrows meeting with a revolting (terrifying) crease of worry. “ _We_ want to help you. We all miss you. I’m… almost happy I found you on my own. People back at the company would be heartbroken if they saw you like this.” 

His heart feels like something wrenches through it, leaving only a black jagged tear in its wake. 

“Are you fucking kidding?” Kazunari snaps. “What a great sob story, Azune, why don’t you throw that one at Tsuzuroon the next time Winter’s draft season comes around.” 

It feels sacrilegious. Moving his tongue so bitterly around names he created with affection and care, to fling them out like they were curses. It feels like he’s standing in a museum of statues he had carved with his own hands, carved in the likeness of each person he had his own name for, crouching at the feet of each and then spitting on them. 

Kazunari stands up, sways a little as black spots his vision, and limps to the bathroom. “I’m sick of dealing with you. Just show yourself out before I do something that really freaks you out.” 

“Is that a threat, Kazunari?” Azuma asks softly. 

“Who knows? Don’t tell anyone I live here or I’ll kill you. Son of a bitch.” 

He slams the bathroom door behind it and falls back on it, sliding down inch by inch. Teeth catch the cuff of his jacket sleeve and clenches down on it hard to muffle a wanton moan. He can imagine it so clearly, of course he can, because he knows exactly how Azuma acts, he knows how everyone acts, he has their behaviors and reactions memorized, he _knows_. He knows _exactly_ what expression Azuma must have on his face as he sits alone in Kazunari’s wretched apartment, even if he didn’t see it before seeking refuge in this bathroom. 

He’s acting so out of character, of normal, he’s breezed past even the _hope_ of redemption. To see him so far gone, Azuma must be _shattered_. He hopes he is. Kazunari hopes so desperately. He wants to leave at least one big, real impact on someone, even if its the fucking ugliest wound in their soul, because at least then he’ll know he existed. He kneads the front of his jeans pathetically, gasping at the slight relief, and it’s all he has to not start laughing deliriously. 

Kazunari stops himself from laughing but does manage to cry two tears. It’s the biggest victory he’s had so far. 

* * *

He has his first breakdown. 

An actual breakdown. 

Everything else seems so meaningless in comparison. 

It’s a blur, too, he has trouble tracking it. 

It definitely _started_ when he was worrying about whether this numbness, this muted terror, this hatred for having to spare the energy to bring air into his lungs, would ever fade. The idea crossed him that it would _never_ fade, and, well… Now, Kazunari is in pieces. He blearily wipes his eyes, his sticky and salted cheeks, his bleeding knuckles, and wonders what the fuck he's going to do about the mirror now reduced to sharp, vicious pieces in the sink. 

He just hated having to look at himself, that was all. 

Kazunari wipes his knuckles on his shirt, not caring for the blood stains, and feels too tired. 

Whatever. 

He crawls back into bed and promises himself he’ll clean the sink tomorrow. 

* * *

Tomorrow. 

* * *

Tomorrow. 

* * *

Kazunari decides to just close the bathroom door indefinitely unless he has to take a piss and now uses only the kitchen sink. The pieces haunt him. _Clean us. Admit you made a mistake_. 

It’s almost victorious, really, the way he holds his chin high and brushes his teeth in the tiny kitchenette sink. If only the mirror shards knew how deeply his denial runs. Then maybe they wouldn’t be beckoning him over with their shit-eating smirks. Kazunari wonders momentarily if he’s going insane. No. Not yet. Depressed? Maybe. Insane? Not yet. Insane is, like, beyond the point of return. 

_But you are_ , something inside of him croons. 

No. 

Not yet. 

He can still save himself. He’s done it before. He can do it later. Later, when he has more energy. 

Kazunari squeezes his eyes shut when something inside of him recoils in the fear that that later will never, ever come. 

* * *

Stop being dramatic. 

Stop it. 

You’re being an idiot. 

How can anyone love you like this? 

Look at how happy the faces on Instablam are. Why can’t that be you? 

How can someone be so unlovable? 

What’s wrong with you? 

Shut up, shut up, shut up. 

* * *

_I wish someone would love me_ , Kazunari thinks to himself sullenly. 

Wouldn’t that be a grand thing? 

Why couldn’t he be like a cookie cutter love interest in a high school soap opera? Why couldn’t someone just come into his life, see him in pieces like this, and fix him until he was perfect? Was it because he was ugly? He knew objectively he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. He tailored his outside appearance to attract others to the best of his abilities and Kazunari was at the very least confident enough to do _that_. 

It must be something on the inside then. 

That hurts even more to realize. 

* * *

It’s because he turned around too quickly. 

His vision blurs, spots, he can’t feel gravity anymore. 

Kazunari plummets when his heel touches the ground the wrong way and slams his temple on the table. The spinning gets worse. _Everything_ hurts but he knows he hit the ground wrong. He blacks out. 

_If you’re nice_ , he says pointedly to God, _you won’t have me wake up_. 

* * *

No, because God is an asshole. 

Kazunari knows he’s not dead and he wants to cuss someone out. 

He cracks open an eye and _wants to die_ when he sees the room he’s in. 

“Good morning.” 

Ah. 

Fuck. 

“Hey.” 

Tsuzuru closes the book and places it on the bedside table. “You’re staying with me indefinitely.” 

“They moved Masumi out?” 

“Yuki moved in with Muku because he got lonely. Sakuya moved in with Tenma because he got lonely. Masumi moved in with Citron because Citron was lonely.” 

Made sense. Kazunari closes his eye. He pauses for a moment and realizes that he’s clean. Well. Alright. His hair is nearly half-black now from how long it’s gone without a dye and he’s maybe two-thirds his weight from before, but at least he’s clean. 

“How long was I asleep?” 

“Three days. We brought you to the hospital and you came back for a second. You threw a fit and went back under. The doctors said you were malnourished but stable enough to be brought back here.” 

“Do my parents know?” 

“Not yet. You’re over eighteen so the Director’s waiting for your permission to tell them.” 

“How did you find me?” 

Tsuzuru pursed his lips. “Azuma.” 

“He told you?” 

“He said he’s been checking in on you. Didn’t tell us until he called for help from your apartment. You can imagine the tension’s running high over it." 

Kazunari’s spine feels like its bending in halves and halves and halves. He wants to die so badly. He wants to run so badly. Shame he can’t feel his legs right. Shame he can’t trust himself to stand up and not wobble like a newborn deer. He rolls over and winces at the way his back’s bedsores irritate. “You should have left me there.” 

Tsuzuru doesn’t say a word. 

“You should have let me fuck off forever. You should have forgotten about me. It would have been a favor for all of us.” 

“We can’t do that, Kazunari,” Tsuzuru says quietly. “That’s not what you do to family.” 

“They all know?” 

“Not everyone’s seen you. Director didn’t let them.” 

Hah. 

It’s an ugly one but the bolt of pride is there. The… what’s the word? Kazunari’s mind is so sluggish, he can’t pin it exactly. The… the _satisfaction_. The word tastes like sickly sweet saccharine candy. Rotten green apple. His favorite flavor. He’s torn himself down so far, the Director thinks he’ll harm the children’s psyche. And he will. Kazunari will smear black ink in the shape of his handprint all over the rest of the theatre. He’ll ruin them. That’s what he does. 

“I don’t belong here.” 

“You do.” He hears the flutter of pages. “We’ll show you. You should rest.” 

Kazunari suddenly realizes something. 

He can’t remember what had happened in the company in the first place that made him run all those months ago. 

It’s probably somewhere in the fog. If he thinks about it a second more, he’ll remember. 

It all seems so pointless. 

It was, really, just the drop of water that broke the dam. 

“I’m sick,” he says matter-of-factly. 

Tsuzuru turns a page. “You’ll get better.” 

“I won’t.” 

“You will.” 

He buries it all away. He’ll deal with the shame and the guilt and the embarrassment and the horror later. Later. Much later. Years later, if he can help it, _never_ , if he can help it. It’s the one thing he’s really good at. The depth of his ability to avoid conflict amazes even himself. 

* * *

Oh, you dumb _bitch_ , he thinks. 

“Misumi, get out,” he hears Tsuzuru say over the screeching. Oh, it’s coming from him. Oh, Kazunari’s bawling. Alright. 

“But—!” 

“Now, _please_.” 

The door shuts but the room is only growing smaller. Kazunari is bawling, and bawling, and he’s tearing his throat apart into raw bloody pieces just by screaming as loud as he is, and he tries to shove Tsuzuru away when he’s wrapped into a hug. He can’t even string words together, he’s destroying himself too thoroughly. 

“It’s okay,” Tsuzuru insists over and over again. “He doesn’t think any differently of you. He _missed_ you.” 

He _can’t_ string words together. He’s only crying. Tsuzuru grabs his hands and forces them away when Kazunari starts clawing at his face in misery. If he cries hard enough, maybe something inside of him will pop, like a major artery. or his entire heart, and he won’t have to deal with this. 

* * *

Azuma, Tsuzuru, and, oddly, Azami. Those are the only three people that are allowed into Kazunari’s room without him losing his mind. 

He and the Director-slash-Sakyo communicate in hand-written notes on folded Post-Its delivered by one of the three. 

No, the Director is not allowed to tell his family. 

Yes, she can lie and say Kazunari had contacted her to let her know that he was okay. Or lie and say she’d seen him in the streets looking healthy. Whatever. Just not the whole truth so they can see him like this. 

No, he will not be staying. 

He has a suspicion that Azami tore that note up before delivering it. 

Azuma hands him a cup of tea. 

“I went through something similar when I was your age,” he says simply. 

Kazunari sneers at his reflection in the cup. He can stand this much, although he’s asked for the other mirrors to be removed. “Right.” 

“I did.” 

“Okay.” 

Azuma pours himself his own cup. “I didn’t stop, though.” 

“Huh?” 

“At the bar. That man. Did you know him?” 

Kazunari rubs the tips of his ears. They’re not burning, although they do itch a little. “No.” 

Azuma nods once. He turns his head and gives Kazunari a blinding, stunning smile that cracks his heart right down the middle. “I didn’t either. But no one stopped me. That road was not one of my favorites.” 

Oh. 

Kazunari sips his tea. He tests the one word out in his head before letting it go. “Thanks.” 

Azuma presses a quick, soft, holds-no-other-meaning kiss to the top of his head. “You are very welcome.” 

* * *

They’re looking at him, Kazunari reckons. Tsuzuru had sworn up and down that all of the company were out, or busy, or were told specifically not to go into the backyard where they have a bench underneath flowering trees, but he catches a flash of cotton-candy pink every now and then at the edge of the sliding glass door. So, they’re definitely looking at him and probably jeering under their breaths (no, Muku would never, even in his own twisted logic Kazunari knows he’s lying to himself there) but he can’t bring himself to stir the energy and throw a tantrum. 

Tsuzuru hands him a biscuit broken in half, the bigger half. Kazunari accepts it and bites into it, not hungry, and chews the mouthful of sand dutifully. 

“You’re looking better,” Tsuzuru mentions. 

“Hm.” 

“Director’s wondering if you’d like to start therapy.” 

Ew. What? 

“Can I leave?” 

Tsuzuru doesn’t say anything. He hands Kazunari his own half of the biscuit like he’d forgotten the first. 

“One of my brothers actually has a good therapist. Really good. I kind of want you to go there first since I actually know the doctor and I can vouch for him.” 

Just let him die already. 

“Fine.” 

“Misumi asked to see you again.” 

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. It hurts. He clears his throat and rubs his chest. “No.” 

“Alright.” 

* * *

His first session of therapy’s tomorrow. 

Kazunari glances at Azuma. He hesitates. 

“Okay,” he says finally. 

Azuma looks up from his magazine. They do that now, the three of them. Rotate being his guardian or whatever and just read quietly at his side. Paper. Never electronics. Probably because he threw a fit when Azami had brought a kindle into the dorm. He can’t remember why. That’s going to be the therapist’s job to figure out. 

“Okay?” Azuma repeats. 

Kazunari jerks his head to the door. “Okay.” 

“Oh. I see.” 

Azuma stands up and leaves. 

* * *

_Knock._

“C…” 

It catches in his throat. 

“Come in,” Kazunari finishes hoarsely. 

The door creaks open. 

He shyly pokes his head in, honey-amber eyes somber and nervous like Kazunari has never seen before in his life. 

“Hi,” Misumi whispers. 

“Hi.” 

Misumi hurries over the floorboards like he’ll break them if he puts his full weight on them. He sits down at the chair by Kazunari’s bed, his _cot_ since he can’t climb up the ladder to the dorm bunks, and brings his knees to his chest. He smiles so warmly, like fire, like a glowing coal, like a hot pack in a winter jacket’s pocket, like breaking open a steamed dumpling, like— 

“I’m glad you’re back,” Misumi says, and holds out his protractor. 

Kazunari can’t touch it. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Maybe—he shakes his head of the thought. 

“Yeah,” Kazunari says. His chin wrinkles. His lower lip quivers. He lies back in bed and rolls over, pulling the blanket over his head, so he can shut Misumi out. 

It hurts. 

It feels like the smallest, most cowardly, most pathetic and disgusting and honest step in the right direction. 

**Author's Note:**

> if you happen to be reading this in a bad place, know that reaching out and getting help makes a huge difference. Life always has the opportunity to turn for the better and you are so important. Suicide and self-harm is never the answer nor steps in the direction of a fantastic future for you with infinite possibilities. 
> 
> Suicide Prevention Line (US) : 1-800-273-8255  
> There are many other resources available for you as well, and phone numbers available online for your specific country. Thank you for reading


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